Sec+ Practice Test from 201 or 301?

spasticnapjerk

Good afternoon everyone. My name is Drew and I just registered on techexams.net. I'm planning on taking SYO-301 this weekend.

I went through Darril Gibson's book a couple of times and took the practice exam and scored a 90/100. Then I took the 50 question practice exam on techexams.net and scored a 56. So I'm wondering why the scores are so different. Is the practice exam on this website that much harder? Or are the questions taken from SYO-201 instead of 301?

Drew Shuller
Soto Cano Air Base, Honduras

Plantwiz

Welcome!

First, look at the objectives as they appear on CompTIA's site. These are the topics one is expected to understand prior to taking the exam. I would recommend the Sybex text for preparation for this exam, but since you have it scheduled in just a few days, you'll have to do with what you have on hand.

The questions on the practice exams may be mostly written from the 201 era, but that does not make them obscelete per se. This is where knowing the objectives is pertinent for prepartion. The exam is also for candidate WITH experience. If you have actual experience with the technologies covered, then a lighter review may be all that is necessary for you.

Focus on knowing and understanding the topics in the objectives rather than answering practice questions. Practice questions can be helpful in assessing one's understanding of a topic, but are not designed to replace study.

HTH

Darril

Welcome to the forums.

One thing I like to stress no matter what questions you use to practice with is to take the time to review the explanations. Ideally, you should be able to look at any question and know why each answer is correct and why each answer is incorrect. This way, no matter how CompTIA words the questions, you'll have a better chance of answering them correctly. I'm not familiar with the questions on this site, so can't answer directly if they are from 201 but Plantwiz would likely know and indicates they may be mostly from 201. The 301 exam has some changes so these changes might be what is causing you to score lower on 201-based questions.

Plantwiz gives good advice about looking at the objectives too. For any exam, it's useful to look at the objectives to see what's familiar to you and what you need to study further. They are listed in the book you have starting on page 8, along with the chapter (or chapters) where the objective is covered.

When you mention that you went through the book a couple of times, I'm assuming you read the content, did the pre-test at the beginning of the book, the practice test questions at the end of each chapter, and the post-test at the end of the book. If you did that, understand the content, and know why the correct answers are correct and the incorrect answers are incorrect, you'll do fine.

Good luck. We'd love to hear about your success this weekend.

naftalir

i passed the exam in December and i took the test in the back of the the book and got a 97 and then i took the tech exams test and scored a 76% basically i got really discouraged but i took the test i schedualed anyway and i can tell you from recent experiance that the exam was very similar to the test in the back of Darril Gibsons book and not like the exam on the techexams.net website, dont be discouraged keep studying and good luck. hope i helped